China has made remarkable achievement of economic development since the open policy initiative in 1978, and been becoming the second largest economy since 2010. Consequently, China's natural environment paid a steep price for this soaring economic growth, with serious resource and pollution problems threating the ecosystems and human health. The environmental and ecological problems faced with China is much more complex and challenging, since different issues that had occurred in various stages spanning more than one hundred years in developed countries assembles to take place intensively in China. Many efforts have been employed to deal with such challenges in the management and academic community. Since the early 1980s, a series of national plans, policies, regulations and laws have been enacted. At the early stage, China's environmental policies, strategies and programs have been greatly influenced by international agencies, particularly the United Nations. The actual monitoring and enforcement is largely undertaken by local governments that have greater interest in economic growth, resulting lax environmental supervision and implementation failures in environmental management. Currently, the slogan ofLucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assetsput forward by PresidentXi Jinpingillustrates the intention of Chinese government to build Eco-civilization and to harmonize the relationship between humans and nature. The determination to shift to green and sustainable development adopted by Chinese central government is changing development mode of the whole country as well as environmental governance system. The new Ministry of Ecology and Environment is set up in 2018, replace from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, aim to enhance the ecologic and environmental supervision and inspection. Correspondingly, the rapidly changing environmental governance system in China produces new environmental institutions and practices. In this context, it is essential to review and summarize what has been done on and what improvement has been achieved for China's environment, which definitely contribute to the understanding of next-phase policy design and implementation for China and even for the developing countries of the world. This special issues aimed to review and report all policies, strategies, programs, implementation, as well as education and training, which have been taken in China to promote the environmental protection in the past decades, particularly new-emerging strategies and measures in recent years.
Detailed contents of the special issue include but are not limited to:
Environmental Management Mechanisms, Regulations and Legislations
2. Resource accounting and ecological space control
Environmental functional zoning
"Three lines and one list"
Ecological red line system
Eco- compensation
Green GDP accounting
Natural Resource Balance Sheet
3. Institutional innovation for environmental pollution control
Emission trading
Environmental tax
Pollutant discharging permit license
Environmental inspection
Transboundary cooperation
Environmental Information Disclosure
4. Environmental policy actions
Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Air Pollution
Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Water Pollution
Action Plan for Soil Pollution Prevention and Control
5. Building a Beautiful China
Target Analysis
Indicators for Beautiful China
Route Map for Beautiful China
China Model and China’s Plan to the Developing Countries and the World
Editors
Dr. Jinnan Wang
Professor, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering
Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning (CAEP)
wangjn@caep.org.cn
Dr. Jun Bi
Professor
School of Environment, Nanjing University
jbi@nju.edu.cn
Dr. Lixiao Zhang
Professor
School of Environment, Beijing Normal University
zhanglixiao@bnu.edu.cn
Dr. Dong Cao
Professor
Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning (CAEP)
caodong@caep.org.cn
Important dates:
Submission starts: December 1, 2018
Submission deadline: April 1, 2019
Final decision notification deadline: October 1, 2019
